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In the end, Maitimo had been forced to step forward and dispatch the audience, sending them hurrying back to Alqualondë and Valmar and up the hill to their homes in Tirion, all of them with instructions to brace themselves, lest Melkor’s vengeance for this setback take them unawares. Finwë’s house were among the last to disperse. Auntie Lalwen went first, after kneeling before Grandfather to take a general’s command, with a mind to set a watch on Tirion’s walls, and then Arafinwë’s brood went all together, to make ready rooms for themselves in the palace, for they would not soon be returning to Alqualondë. Last of all, a slow and reluctant division occurred between the houses of Fëanáro and Nolofinwë, leaving their uncle alone with his children and Finwë, and the seven of them alone with their father, to try and find some way to say the unsayable apology.
Yet to his surprise, when Maitimo returned at last to his room in the palace, where they too were staying since the house in Tirion sat cold and empty, there was one of Nolofinwë’s sons waiting for him in the dark, lying in his bed in his nightshirt with damp hair, loose from its usual braids, spread across the pillow.
“I thought you would be with your father,” Maitimo said, sitting at the mirror and lighting a candle with a snap of his right hand. The bright colours with which he had painted his eyes and lips seemed so gaudy now, after the horror of the day.
“I was,” Findekáno said, without rolling over to look at him. “He sent me out. Told me to come look for you, actually. He says ‘thank you’ for the sword.”
The water in his washbasin was cool and clean as he cupped it in his hands and brought it to his face, but it slowly stained with the paints he removed, and so too did the rag he set aside for this purpose.
“Why did he send you away?”
In the mirror, he watched Findekáno curl up smaller. “To convince me he was true, back on the field, he had to show me what happened to him in Sauron’s clutches. Not all of it – I doubt he would ever show any soul that – but more than he ever wanted me to know. I can barely look at him without seeing it, now, and he no more can look on me without the knowledge that I know.”
He dried his face, removed the rest of his jewels and the stiff robe he had embroidered with dozens of eight-pointed stars for the reunion, and laid himself down beside Findekáno on the sheets in his shift, but did not touch for all he yearned to.
“He hates me,” Findekáno decided. “And so he should! How could your father see unaided what I needed to have shoved into my head? I was as good as Sauron’s confederate in the matter.”
“He does not hate you. He held you to him on that field as if you were of the highest worth in all these blessed lands. And I have heard it said that my father is the Greatest of the Noldor. It is folly to compare yourself to him, and brings only misery. We have all had to learn that lesson in time, some harder than others.”
“And none harder than we have all learned it now!” Maitimo folded his hands together on his chest and waited. “My father- I can hardly tell you, it is not mine to tell, but these are terrible things, such as I have never seen. I did not think such pain or misery existed in the world! I certainly did not think it could be borne. I might still lose him any moment to the fading, and I cannot bear that, so much weaker am I.”
“You are stronger than you think. It will not pass unmarked in song what you did today. That was courage.”
“Courage,” Findekáno said, into the pillow, “is what my father did coming here to face Sauron, when he already knew the fell character of his nature.”
“It is not a matter of sums or percentages. His courage does not lessen yours. You build each other up.”
“Then why can we not stand each other’s presence?”
“Perhaps he simply did not want to see you hurting, any more than you wanted that for him.” Findekáno made a small, wretched noise, and Maitimo could not resist snaking out a hand to comfort him by touch, which was caught and held, and Findekáno uncurled himself just a moment that he might roll over and rebury his face in Maitimo’s shoulder. There was a reassurance for Maitimo in having him so close, though it was a poisoned thing. He could not take any joy in a moment where Findekáno felt so much pain, and wished that by his embrace, he could shut out all the marring of the world. “Tonight is for grief, and anger too, for you have lost a terrible thing – time, which you will never regain. Let it burn now, and go to him again tomorrow, when your eyes are clearer.”
He extinguished the candle as he had lit it, with a snap of his fingers.